Blended Learning: What Works?

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Blended Learning: What Worksthey’re doing to take this course or program?” What’s in it for them? Once youknow that, how do you communicate that to them and their managers?Deployment and Support• Every possible deployment method is needed:• CD-Rom• Conference Calls• Performance Aids• Webinars• Web-based based coursesDeployment processesmake or breakthe program.• Do NOT assume that learners have access to theinternet• Do NOT assume that learners have high bandwidth• Do NOT assume that learner’s PCs are “ready”38 © Bersin & AssociatesBlended Learning: What Works7. Blended learning does not have to cost Millions. You can build your owncontent.Another interesting finding. Many companies outsource major e-learning projects – andsometimes spend millions of dollars. One of our research companies spent millions ofdollars creating a business simulation which trained financial professionals how to usenew accounting principles. In this particular case, the problem was global – and the costof failure was very high – so it was worth the cost. If you have a very large audience anda very big problem, you can cost-justify a lot of money on content.(The simple cost equation for blended learning is the tradeoff between development costand delivery cost. For web-based training, for example, high development costs can beamortized by low delivery costs if the audience is large. For classroom training, lowerdevelopment costs and higher delivery costs are justified when the audience is small.)However in most cases what we found was the opposite. Companies are now developingweb-based content for $100’s per instructor hour (we used to charge $30-70,000 perinstructor hour in my prior life!). How do they do this? They often hire a vendor to“teach them” how to build courseware – then they get a small team together (3-4 people)and build the content internally. This appears to be a major trend.One company developed a major SAP upgrade program which was business criticalacross more than 10,000 employess for a total development cost of $75,000. This is lessthan $7.50 per employee for development cost – the cost of lunch in most big cities.© Bersin & Associates 8 May 2003
Blended Learning: What WorksDevelopment Processes• There are no “standard” tools• In-house development is ½-1/5 ½thecost of outsourced development• Develop In House:• Content with short shelf life• “Disposable” content• Informational content• Outsource:• Highly instructionally rich• Very long-lasting lasting content• Simulation-based solutions• You can drive content developmentcosts below $1000 per course hourDevelopment CostsMinimum costCost per coursehour$35,000$4,000-22,000There are no“standard” toolsused overall.Companies are bringing contentdevelopment in-house withexcellent results.41 © Bersin & AssociatesBlended Learning: What Works8. Huge Impact is PossibleThe most fascinating of all findings from our work was that Blended Learning in fact hashuge and measurable business impact. Most of the companies we studied told us that theblended learning programs they built solved problems which were impossible to solve inany other way.The biggest business benefits of blended learning which we found are:• Scale: You can roll out a new initiative or program to global audiences and reachmore people than ever possible before. This is the promise of e-learning and it istrue.• Speed: If you need to train people within months, you can reach thousands ofpeople simultaneously. Although there is a fixed time to develop content, thetime to deploy is fast. If the business problem is NOW and the content willbecome stale, blended learning is the answer.• Throughput: If your training problem is bottlenecked (one telecommunicationscompany had such a backlog of training that technicians were driving around intrucks drinking coffee for weeks waiting for new-hire training slots), you caneliminate that bottleneck and improve training throughput by orders of magnitude.• Complexity: many training challenges are just too complex for a single webbasedcourse or PowerPoint based webinars. If the material is complex and your© Bersin & Associates 9 May 2003
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Blended Learning: What Works?

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